THE
ATONEMENT
W. John Murray
New
Thoughts on Old Doctrines
Divine Science Publishing Co.
New York, N.Y., 1918
[97]
"I and my
Father are one.
"If that which ye have heard from the
beginning shall remain in you, ye also
shall continue in the Son, and in the
Father.
"That they all may be one, as thou,
Father, art in me and I in thee, that
they also may be one in us.
"Wherefore henceforth know we no man
after the flesh: yea, though we have
known Christ after the flesh, yet now
henceforth know we him no more.
"But ye are not in the flesh, but in the
Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God
dwell in you.
"For in him we live, and move, and have
our being.
"Christ in you the hope of glory.
"For ye are dead, and your life is hid
with Christ in God. "Yet not I, but
Christ liveth in me.
"And ye are Christ's; and Christ is
God's.
"He that abideth in me, and I in him, the
same bringeth forth much fruit: for
without me, ye can do nothing."
[98]
BLANK
[99] THE
ATONEMENT
"Hereby know
we that we dwell in him, and he in us,
because he hath given us of his
spirit."-l JOHN 4.13.
This subject
of the Atonement is one of such general
belief, and yet one so poorly understood,
especially in the world of denominational
Christianity, that when one comes to
study what the world calls the New
Thought, or Divine Science, or Primitive,
or Apostolic, or Applied Christianity, at
once there arises the question: What of
the atonement? So profoundly does the old
thought hold to the atonement that the
seeker hesitates very frequently to take
advantage of the healing efficacy of
Divine Science and kindred philosophies,
because some one has said that these do
not believe in the atonement.
I want to
make it as clear as possible that we not
only believe in the atonement, but [100]
through our studies we have come to a
more glorified consciousness of what the
atonement means. We not only believe in
it, we understand it, in some degree and
to some extent. If our views have changed
concerning it, they have not changed for
the worse, but rather for the better. We
have, I believe, a more satisfying
concept of what the atonement really
is.
The belief
in the atonement did not originate with
Jesus. When we begin to investigate the
doctrine we find it as old as the human
mind itself. Go back as far as we can in
the history of the race, and we find a
belief in a necessary atonement. Far back
in the Dark Ages, when man had
innumerable gods, more or less vicious,
more or less wrathful, angry, and
jealous, there arose the necessity of
atonement. The very earliest record we
have is that which is set forth in the
older Scriptures. In the Christian Bible,
or the Hebrew Testament, we find the
rites and rituals of a particular day,
called the Day of Atonement, amplified
and set forth with unerring accuracy. In
a changed form [101]the ceremony still
exists among the Hebrew people.
In order to
arrive at a more satisfying idea of what
atonement means, it might be well for us
to look back and see what it has meant to
the race in the past. It has passed
through many stages; and various and
almost innumerable concepts have been
held by the mind of man, beginning, I
think, with that definition of
atonement set forth in our
lexicons as appeasement.
Atonement
originally meant a method, a ceremony, or
a means by which Deity was placated. The
means by which the race at that time
sought to appease the wrath of the
Infinite, was to offer up innocent bulls,
rams, goats, pigeons, and other living
creatures. The earliest description we
find of the Day of Atonement in the Old
Testament, tells of the ceremonial use of
two goats; the blood of one was offered
up as the first appeasement of the wrath
of God: this was the slain goat. The
other was the scapegoat, over which the
hands of the priest were held, and upon
whose back was placed all the sins of
[102] the children of Israel; the goat
was driven off into the wilderness, away
from the haunts of men, and its own kind,
either to live or die in solitude, as the
case might be. It had done all that was
required of it. The scapegoat had borne
away upon its inoffensive and innocent
back the sins of the children of
Israel.
As we come
down through the Old Testament we find a
gradually changing concept of the
atonement. We find the major and minor
prophets alike declaring that the
nostrils of God are offended by the
odours of the burnt offerings that the
children of Israel are offering up to him
on their mounts of sacrifice. We find the
minor prophets, especially men like
Hosea, Micah, and Amos, upbraiding the
children of Israel because of their
belief that they can appease the wrath of
the Infinite by any such method or
procedure. But we find the Hebrews still
clinging to rite and ceremony, to the
old-established order of things, from
which they cannot seem to get away. Even
when our intellects become [103]
persuaded of the error and foolishness of
any practice, we still continue observing
the old rite and ceremony with our
customary annual regularity, so tightly
does habit hold the soul. The new
dispensation changed nothing.
When Jesus
came, he found the Jewish thought of
ceremonies still obtaining even in the
minds of those who came to him for his
teaching. They still believed in the
wrath of God; they still believed in the
necessity of appeasement.
So, we find
our New Testament writers placing an
emphasis on the atonement which it should
not have received: it is merely the
Interpretation born of their own
preconceived theories. If at one time the
wrath of God could be appeased only by
the offering.up of animal sacrifices, now
nothing short of the innocent blood of
his own beloved Son would suffice.
And today,
after two thousand years of Christianity,
we find, to a greater or less degree,
this peculiar theory concerning the
atonement still holding the mind. Men
still [104] believe that the innocent
blood of Jesus was shed for the remission
of sins. To these it seems as if the
belief were based upon Scriptural truth.
But we must remember that those who came
to Jesus were men whose minds still held
the old idea of the sacrificial
atonement, for which at one time an
animal sufficed. And since they thought
God must be appeased in some way, we find
them naturally using their old theories
for present purposes.
Here we find
that greatest of all sacrifices, the
innocent Jesus, suffering for the sins of
his people, not only those of his time,
but yours and mine. There are those who
believe that he died in order to save
them from the consequences of their own
sins; that all they have to do is to
profess to believe in the sacred name of
Jesus, to believe that they are washed in
the blood of the Lamb, and all their past
errors and mistakes and sins will be
wiped out by this vicarious
atonement.
Divine
Science does not uphold this theory. It
does not believe that the glorious
sacrifice of Jesus' self was a personal
sacrifice [105] by the way of atonement
for your sins or mine. We alone can do
this--none can do it for us.
If we have
taken the atonement out of the category
of appeasement and brought it into the
category of reconciliation, we have made
little progress indeed. The idea which
obtains largely among modern theologians,
is that the purpose of Jesus' great
sacrifice was to reconcile God to man.
If, in the beginning of the history of
the race, we merely sought to appease the
wrath of God through the offering up of
animal sacrifices, and now through the
death of his well-beloved Son we seek to
reconcile God to the race, we still have
not made much progress.
The whole
teaching of Jesus was the exact reverse
of this. The whole burden of his song was
that man should become reconciled to the
law of God. The reconciliation was not on
the part of God, but on the part of man:
this was his whole teaching.
He came not
to make atonement, but to interpret it.
He came not to go through a certain
bloody sacrifice in order that this [106]
atonement might be brought about, but to
acquaint us intelligently with the
definition and the possibilities of
atonement.
We have
three definitions given of the word
atonement. The first is
appeasement; the second is
reconciliation; and the third is
unification or unity or
at-one-ment. It is this last
interpretation which Divine Science
prefers to use. Separate the word
atonement and you find
at-one-ment, which means being
at one, not atoning for.
The whole
purpose of Jesus was not to die or to
atone, but to make clear, to exemplify,
man’s at-one-ment with God; this
was the real atonement of Jesus.
Perhaps, you
argue, it was the purpose of his Father
to offer up his beloved Son as a
sufficient expiation for our sins and all
the sins of the race. It might seem so;
just so long as we regard God in the
light of a sympathizing, loving, human
parent, and no more, just so long
we shall hold this idea.
Let us
suppose that a mutiny breaks out aboard a
battleship in war-time. Let us suppose
this mutiny threatens to hamper the [107]
fleet and destroy the particular ship on
which it takes place; let us suppose, in
addition, that the mutineers are arrested
and tried. We all know that the usual
sentence pronounced under such conditions
is the sentence of death.
Suppose that
aboard this battleship is the Captain's
only child. This son goes to his father
and says: "I realize, Father, the
dastardly conduct of these sailors; I
realize the evil consequences that may
follow if such outbreaks are not stopped.
But I also realize their ignorance, and
that therefore they ought not pay the
penalty of their offenses; I offer myself
in their place. I offer myself as a
sufficient appeasement of your wrath. I
offer myself as a sufficient substitute
for their bodies." When you look at it
from the point of personal sacrifice it
is wonderful, marvelous, glorious.
"Greater love hath no man than this, that
he lay down his life for his
friends."
But, suppose
the father accepts the son's offer! No
matter what we think of this son, no
matter how gloriously we conceive of his
[108] character, no matter how we magnify
his love and self-sacrifice: what shall
we think of the father?
What should
we think of the human parent who accepted
as a sufficient substitute for mutinous
sailors his own inoffensive child? Yet,
is not this the thing we have understood
of the atonement: that God sent his only
begotten Son into the world to die in
order that we might live?
What we want
to do is to take the atonement out of the
category of dispensations, and to relieve
our minds of the thought that it was a
providential occurrence. If it had been a
providential occurrence, if he were
predestined to it, Jesus would not be
entitled to quite so much credit as we
have been in the habit of bestowing upon
him; because, if a man does what he is
destined to do, and is given the strength
and the grace to go through with it,
there is not so much that is
praiseworthy: he could not do anything
else.
If this is
true concerning Jesus, is it not equally
true concerning Judas, who betrayed him?
If it was a predestined tragedy [109] or
drama, intended to work out for the good
of the race, why consider Judas the
villain in the play, with hissing and
execrations? Why should we go on down the
centuries hissing one who was selected by
the Great Playwright himself for the
part, for a part that no other man in the
universe could play? Why should we go on
perpetually applauding another for
playing the character that was destined
for him originally? Why should we applaud
if the words he speaks were put in his
lips and mouth, if the strength were put
in his limbs, and the courage put in his
heart? What credit is it to him, or what
discredit to the other? These are
questions for the thoughtful mind to
ponder.
We believe
in the atonement as the most necessary
thing in the universe, but we cannot
believe in it as we used to. So we take
the third definition of the word, "to
make at-one with." May I say that Jesus
did not die quite so much to appease the
wrath of God concerning the other
children of God, as to appease the wrath
of men? May I [110] say that he did not
die quite so much upon a demand on the
part of God, as upon the part of men?
According to our old teachings, we
believed that God handed Jesus over to
the world and said to the people of that
time, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" But, if
you study the New Testament carefully,
you will find that it was the Pharisees
who said "Crucify him!"
Why did they
demand the blood of the innocent Jesus?
Because he.had proclaimed a great truth
which was so contradictory and in such
direct and utter opposition to anything
they had ever believed before, that they
at once proclaimed him a blasphemer. He
declared the truth of the atonement. He
never participated in a sacrificial
ceremony, but he sought to make clear
what the atonement was, and to define it
as the atonement of man with God. So he
said, in the words of our text: "I am in
the Father, and ye in me, and I in you."
The moment he voiced this beautiful
thought, the Pharisees said: "Crucify
him! He maketh himself to be one with
God, equal with God! Crucify [111] him!"
This was the first thing that disturbed
and angered, or irritated them, this
conviction that since he assumed more
than any other man in the world had yet
assumed, he was declaring himself to be
equal with God!
Since that
day we have gone on believing that the
thing had to be done, the crucifixion
gone through, and that according to
divine dispensation. Perhaps it was
necessary for it to take place, but not
according to divine dispensation quite so
much as according to human ignorance and
human anger.
We are told
it was his own Heavenly Father and not
the Pharisees who pre-ordained Jesus to
the crucifix. It was the Pharisees who
were agitated into a state of mind which
demanded the blood of this innocent
man.
Then his own
disciples, who had just enough of the Jew
left in them, just enough of the old
order of thought left to make the idea a
natural one, conceived of his death as an
atonement. Instead, it was the
manifestation of his atonement with the
great Infinite [112] Life. He was too
great to kill, but in order that other
men might know the truth, he laid down
his life.
The idea of
the at-one-ment of Jesus is the idea of a
tremendous love. All of the glory goes to
Jesus because he did what he did not
actually have to do, though some of us
feel that he was obliged to do it; but in
his own words, he said, "I have power to
lay down my life, and power to take it
again."
He might
have avoided the crucifixion if he had
wished. He might have avoided all the
harrowing and harassing conditions that
preceded his crucifixion. It was not an
incumbent necessity that he should die
for you and me. He merely assumed the
responsibility of proclaiming a great
truth at the cost of angering others, at
the cost of being misunderstood, at the
cost of being misrepresented and
crucified.
Always you
will find Jesus speaking of his Heavenly
Father as Love, Infinite Love. You will
find him illustrating the great love of
God in a speech to a few Pharisees
standing about: "What man is there of
you, [113] whom if his son ask bread,
will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a
fish, will he give him a serpent?" Will
God answer your prayers by giving you the
very opposite thing to that for which you
cry?
To the mind
of Jesus, God was Love. If he prophesied
his crucifixion and death, he also
prophesied his own resurrection and
ascension. But his prophecies of
suffering were based, not so much upon
the actions of a divine Providence, as
upon the actions of men who did not
understand him.
If any one
were to bring a new idea to the world
today, he would be perfectly justified in
proclaiming the fact, though the idea
would not be adopted at once. Perhaps men
would so misunderstand his motive that
they would persecute him; they might hand
him over to the authorities, or regard
him simply as a harmless lunatic. Because
he realized that man would not understand
his mission, knowing also the nature of
the men of his day, Jesus was able to
prophesy his own destruction, his own
crucifixion.
He knew the
men of his time were so [114] grossly
ignorant as to be terribly vindictive. He
realized if he said anything contrary to
their fixed beliefs, anything that
angered them, they would immediately rise
against him and clamour for his
blood.
A man may
proclaim almost any kind of a belief
today and no one would think of crying
"Crucify him!" But the customs of that
far-off day were different, and Jesus
knew, when he came and overturned one of
their most cherished institutions; when
he proclaimed an atonement that did away
with blood sacrifice altogether, and made
it a process of growth rather than a
sacrificial offering; he was going to
incur the vengeance of the priests,
because he was going against the
established order of over two thousand
years. He knew he was going to incur the
anger, the hostility, the antagonism, the
hatred of the Pharisees; though we are
told that the common people heard him
gladly. But those who cherished as their
lives the rites and customs and
ceremonies; to whom the sending of the
scapegoat to the [115] wilderness and the
offering up of a bloody sacrifice was
necessary, were aroused.
Let us study
the meaning of the atonement, and note
its effect on the people of that day,
with regard to its resulting in making
them better men. When the memory of the
atonement, the ritual and the ceremonies
were over, they went back to their fields
and stores, to their false balances and
usury and crookedness, only waiting
another Day of Atonement to wipe it all
out; only waiting another poor scapegoat
to be sent into the wilderness to atone
for their offenses, century after century
wiping out their misdeeds once a year.
What wonder the minor prophets pleaded:
"Of what value are your bloody
sacrifices? They are a stench in the
nostrils of God."
Now, let us
take the atonement of Jesus. Does each
man, who believes in the atonement of
Jesus feel that the offering up of the
blood of our Saviour has made sufficient
recompense to Almighty God for his
particular sins? Has it? Does the
Christian belief in the atonement, the
offering up of [116] the innocent blood
of Jesus, save us from the penalty of our
own wrongdoing? If it does, then the
atonement is right as the theologians put
it. If the blood of Jesus was offered up
for the remission of your sins and of
mine, then the penalty due our sins has
been remitted through this wonderful,
marvelous, and most inexplicable
sacrifice.
But, even
when we believe in this interpretation
most perfectly, we go on our peculiar
ways, living our peculiar lives, standing
up today and falling down tomorrow;
therefore, nothing has been altered or
remitted. It must mean vastly more than
this--, hence we take the third
definition of the word: to unify, to
make at-one-with; to establish
connection between the individual and the
Universal; to reveal to man his unity
with the great Deific Principle.
This was the
only idea of atonement in the mind of
Jesus. I do not think that it ever
occurred to him that his dying on the
crucifix was going to relieve you and me
from the penalties of our own Sins, or
that we could be washed in "the blood of
the [117] Lamb," as we have used this
phrase, if we meant to go on living a
life of recklessness and sinfulness, then
at the last, could say-- "I believe in
Jesus, I am washed in his redeeming
blood."
That would
not put us in the kingdom; mere belief
will not do us any good. It must be more
than that. Jesus said: "Believe in God,
believe also in me." He might have gone
further and added: "Believe in
yourselves; believe that you, too, are
the sons of God, and believe it so
thoroughly that you will act according to
your belief; this will bring about the
atonement."
We do not
believe that God will be angry with his
own children. We do not believe that he
has to be reconciled to us. We know he
has no grudge against us. If we realize
the fact that we are spiritual beings and
not material, that we are now the
children of God, gradually we are brought
into at-one-ment in consciousness, and we
become consciously at-one with the
All-Good, the Perfect, the Permanent.
This is the
idea of atonement that Divine [118]
Science is bringing to all men. This is
taking it out of the sacrificial, out of
the low, the vulgar, the gross, and
bringing it up into the beautiful and the
holy.
It does not
do away with the atonement; it beautifies
it; it makes it a spiritual state to you
and to me.
We believe
also in sacrifice, but not in blood
atonement. We believe that if we
sacrifice our evil habits on the altar of
Infinite Love; if we sacrifice our lusts,
our anger, our jealousies, our wrath, our
indolence; that we shall then be more
alive to the great fact that God is not a
wrathful God, not a jealous God; that He
does not require appeasement, nor to be
reconciled to us, because God has no
grudges and holds none against us. Does
it shock some of you to know that it is
impossible to offend God? It might,
considering the fact that you as children
were taught that whenever you committed a
sin you did offend God, considering the
fact that perhaps you are now teaching
your own children that whenever they
commit a sin they are offending God.
[119] It is just as impossible for man to
offend God by sin as it is for man to
offend the principle of mathematics by
creating mathematical errors--just as
impossible. Our mistakes could not offend
God in the slightest, any more than the
errors of a musician affect the great
principle of musical harmony. It goes on
the same, yesterday, today, and forever,
and is never affected by any deviation
whatsoever on the part of the musician.
The principle of mathematics is never
changed in the slightest degree as a
result of the errors which children make
in schoolrooms, accountants make in banks
or other places. So it is that your sins,
your errors of thought and conduct, have
never and can never offend God. That is
the great beauty of the thought of God as
impersonal Divine Principle.
We do not
have to reconcile the sun to let its rays
shine upon us. We do not have to
reconcile the sun to an object in a dark
alley; all we have to do is to move the
object, and place it in the sun's
beneficent rays. All we have to do is to
move out of [120] the darkness, out of
our spiritual ignorance, to be taken out,
if you prefer, from this belief in the
necessity of any one man in the universe
atoning for any other man's sins.
Perhaps you
are wondering what I am thinking of the
wonderful sacrifice of Jesus? Perhaps you
are wondering if in my own mind I am
belittling it? Only a few pages back I
said that he did not have to do it; it
was not an incumbent necessity placed
upon him by his Heavenly Father. He did
it voluntarily, and herein, to my mind,
lies the great grandeur of the character
of Jesus, that he did that voluntarily
which perhaps you and I could not be
dragged into doing. He did it by the
exercise of a tremendous love, which you
and I are trying to cultivate, and, I
trust, with some small measure of
success. He realized that there was no
other way out of it. To withhold the
truth from the race to save his own life
would have been cowardly. To proclaim the
truth and take all the terrible risk of
so doing in order that you and I might
know the truth, was [121] heroic, but
from the standpoint of a providential
dispensation, not necessary.
Some one has
said that responsibilities gravitate in
the direction of the man who is willing
to assume them. I want you to bear that
thought in mind. It is a good thought.
You cannot have lived long nor had much
experience if you have not seen the truth
of the statement. The big men in the
world are the men who have been willing
to assume responsibilities. The little
men in the world are the men who never
wanted to assume responsibility.
Jesus was
one of the greatest men in the world and
he assumed the greatest and biggest
responsibility, the responsibility of
proclaiming the atonement of man with
God, and at the very real risk of being
accused of blasphemy, a death-penalty
crime in his day.
The people
of the time were not so generous to
contrary views as they are today. They
did not try him for heresy, though they
proclaimed him to be a heretic; --they
demanded his blood, and their demand was
heeded.
[122] But
what to them was the finish of a man, was
to him the beginning of a principle. What
to them was the destruction of his life,
was to him the opportunity for the
exercise of his constructive faculty. He
took an opportunity to prove the
supremacy of life over death, of love
over hate, of truth over error. And so he
has handed down to you and to me the
possibility of one man, though falsely
accused, doing something by which all men
might be benefited and blessed.
You see, I
am reverently trying to take the
atonement out of the category of
complacent necessity and put it where it
belongs, on the plane of individual
responsibility voluntarily assumed. He
took it up as his part in the great play
of life and carried it out like the man
he was. This is, to me, the great glory
of the character of Jesus. He manifested
all the godly qualities in the fullness
of their beauty, grandeur, might, and
power, because he did what he was not
required, but what he thought was right;
he did it to establish the fact that you
and I and the man down the street are at
one with God. [123] Jesus established the
new dispensation and the new idea of the
atonement; infinitely greater than
offering up his own body on the crucifix
was the offering up of himself, and when
I say himself, I mean his human self, his
human appetites and pleasures, in order
that he might take on divine attributes
and joys. Atonement means just this to
you and me.
We have
always been one with God. If we are not
conscious of it, it is our misfortune. If
we do not realize our atonement, it is a
pity. But once we do begin to realize it,
in the degree of our realization, we
begin to live, in accordance with our
one-ness. We begin to live like God, in
the godly, higher nature.
That is the
only possible proof of at-one- ment. A
mere belief in the atonement does not
help us. A million can believe for one
who can prove it, even in the smallest
degree. Jesus not only believed it, he
exemplified it. In every act and thought
of his life, in everything he did, he
showed his unity with God. In laying down
his own [124] mortal life, while
proclaiming immortality through the
resurrection of Lazarus, he not only
lived the Life, but demonstrated it. It
was not merely a beautiful life, it was a
powerful life. It was Creative Life.
It not only
healed the sin-sick soul, if you believe
the Gospels, but it healed the suffering
soul of its bodily infirmities. Because
the power of God was with him, it not
only brought comfort to the sorrowful,
but strength to the weak, sight to the
blind, hearing to the deaf. He did, not
what he was ordained to do, but what he
assumed as his part: the proclamation of
the truth.
This,
perhaps, changes the colour of the
atonement, but it is far more satisfying
to us in Divine Science than the old
belief that the blood of bulls and goats
appeased the wrath of a far-away God. It
is far more satisfying than the idea that
the innocent Son of God offered up his
own life on the accursed cross in order
that we might avoid the consequence and
punishment of our sins. It becomes
beautiful the moment we think of it as
the proclamation for every man [125] in
the universe, that consciously or
unconsciously, he is the son of God.
The great
change that is necessary is the change in
consciousness. Of what avail is it to be
free and not to know it? Of what avail is
it for a man to be in a prison cell with
the doors unlocked so that he could walk
out, if he is not conscious of the fact
that the doors are unlocked? After years
of imprisonment, labouring under the
continual belief that the door is locked
and utterly impassable, he will conclude
that it is his home for the rest of his
life, and will never make an attempt to
leave it. If, in the secrecy of the
night, some one had turned the lock and
suggested to the prisoner that he come
out, and the prisoner should walk up and
down his cell, just as he had always
done, hearing but not accepting the
suggestion, labouring under the belief
that the door was still locked, would he
not be free and captive at the same time?
And would not his captivity be the
captivity of his ignorance? The race, for
the most part, is stalking up and down in
the cage of [126] spiritual ignorance.
The lock was turned some centuries ago by
Jesus; but, through misinterpretation, we
have come to feel that we are just as
much prisoners to the senses, just as
much captives to the body, just as much
slaves to sensation, as the race ever was
at any time in the world's history. We go
up and down performing the same tired,
weary walk, century in and century out,
never knowing that we are free, never
realizing that we can come out into the
great broad daylight and sunlight of the
presence of God, because we do not know
that we are at-one with God. We feel that
we must atone for our past, and so we
must; but not to God.
At first it
may seem blasphemous for a self-confessed
sinner to proclaim his unity with God.
But is this self-confessed sinner ever
going to be anything other than a sinner
so long as we proclaim his separateness
from God?
If because
of evil habits and poverty he has allowed
himself to be held away from God, when he
begins to consciously feel he [127] is
one with the Infinite he knows that he is
not a sot, but a spiritual being, that he
is not a drunkard, but a manifestation of
divinity. Does not this consciousness
circulate through him, strengthening him
and mending every nerve of his body, and
does it not show in his face? Is it not
from this and through this that he begins
to lift himself above his past, getting
away from his dead self, to arise and go
to his Father?
Just so long
as a man believes himself at odds with
God, just so long as he feels he can
never become one with the Infinite, just
so long he will continue to be a
drunkard, and poor and sick and diseased.
It cannot be otherwise.
At-one-ment
with Life and Truth and Power and Peace
comes through the realizing sense of our
atonement with the Infinite, and not
through a belief that some one else has
paid the penalty for our crimes.
Your
reformation and my reformation depend
upon the realizing sense of our
spirituality, followed by the
determination to [128] put that
spirituality foremost and prove it,
demonstrate it. To do this we must feel
consciously at one with the Deific
Power.
This is the
atonement. The only sacrifice that is
necessary is the sacrifice of our
preconceived theories, our mistakes, our
errors of judgment, and our ignorances.
These things, which are not necessary to
our well being, to our happiness, to our
health, we are to offer up on the altar
of Love. Thus we shall find our true
sense of atonement.
Chapter
6
* * * * *
New Thoughts on Old
Doctrines
Table of
Contents
(Formerly at
Northwoods Divine Science Resource
Center)
